Use Education to Fight AIDS, De Klerk Urges African Leaders

African leaders must use the schoolroom to spread knowledge among the young about the dangers of AIDS, former South African president Frederik de Kler

African leaders must use the schoolroom to spread knowledge among the young about the dangers of AIDS, former South African president Frederik de Klerk said in remarks quoted Friday.

Speaking on a lecture tour here, the former South African leader said AIDS needed to defeated by communication and education.

"We must fight AIDS in out schoolrooms, in our churches and mosques. We must fight it in our villages and in the sprawling shanty towns around our cities. We must fight it in the streets and in the fields," he said, reported by the newspaper This Day on Friday.

"Our enemy, alas, cannot at present be defeated by medicines but it can be defeated by communication, determination and passion," he said.

"The lives of millions - if not tens of millions - of the children of Africa are in mortal peril because of the threat of AIDS," de Klerk told his audience late Thursday at a lecture in Lagos.

"Education is not only the key to economic growth and development. It is the first requirement in the war against AIDS," he said -- LAGOS (AFP)